I'm going to read two more poems from that book
and then end with some new ones.
This is a poem called Hearing.
And again, it's a poem about Mexico sort of, you know,
part of the landscape.
Back when it took all day to come up
from the curving broad ponds on the plains
where the green wing jaçanas ran on the lily pads
easing past tracks at the mouths of gorges crossing
villages silted and hollows in the foothills,
each with its lime washed church by the baked square
of red Earth and its talkers eating fruit under trees.
Turning a corner and catching sight at last of inky forests
far above steep as faces with the clouds stroking them
and the glimmering airy valleys opening out of them.
Waterfalls still roared from the folds of the mountain,
white and thundering.
And spray drifted around us, swirling into the broad leaves
and the waiting boughs.
Once I took a tin cup and climbed the sluice box
and mossy branches beside one of the high
falls, looking up step by step into the green sky
from which rain was falling.
When I looked back from a ledge, there were only dripping leaves
below me and flowers.
Beside me, the hissing cataract plunged into the trees.
Holding on, I moved closer, left foot
on a rock in the water, right foot on a rock in deeper water.
At the edge of the fall then from under the weight
of my right foot came a voice like a small bell ringing
over and over, one clear treble syllable.
I could feel it move.
I could feel it ring in my foot, in my skin,
everywhere, in my ears and my hair.
I could feel it in my tongue and in the hand holding the cup.
As long as I stood there, it went on without changing.
When I moved the cup, still it went on.
When I filled the cup in the falling column,
still it went on.
When I drank, it rang in my eyes through the thunder curtain.
When I filled the cup again, when I raised my foot,
still it went on.
And all the way down from wet rock
to wet rock, green branch to green branch, it came with me.
Until I stood looking up and we drank the light water.
And when we went on, we could still
hear the sound as far as the next turn on the way over.